PARAMUS — A new 150,000-square-foot health center designed to bring specialists and services out of the hospital and into the community is opening on From Road.
Hackensack Meridian Health began planning the health center two years ago as part of its push to expand its outpatient facilities to make healthcare more accessible and convenient. Some of the center’s services, like primary care and dermatology, opened earlier this year. Others, like its infusion center, imaging and oncology will open this summer.
“More and more, healthcare is being provided outside of the four walls of the hospital,” said Robert Garrett, Hackensack Meridian Health CEO. “To me, this is really the future of healthcare: convenient, easy to access, very high-quality healthcare that had traditionally been provided in a hospital, provided in an ambulatory care setting.”
The health network has “more shovels in the ground” than ever before, Garrett said, with 24 health and wellness centers recently opened or in various stages of construction. Paramus is the network’s largest center so far.
Hackensack Meridian broke ground on a medical office facility at NJ Transit’s Metropark station in Woodbridge in March. Other facilities recently opened in Clifton, Clark and Eatontown.
The Paramus Health and Wellness Center occupies the first, fifth and much of the fourth floors of 650 From Road, a 340,000-square-foot, five-story corporate office building down the street from Paramus Park Mall. Three surgical centers will also open nearby in a smaller building on the same corporate campus.
Transforming much of the building into medical offices is part of a larger reimaging of corporate office space as vacancies soared after the start of the pandemic, said Jose Lozano, Hackensack’s chief growth officer. The building will be effectively split into two, he said, with a dedicated patient entrance on one side, close to parking and designed to mirror the look of the main hospital in Hackensack.
The site’s location, just off Route 17 and the Garden State Parkway and near Route 4 provides greater accessibility to patients coming from any corner of the county, Lozano said. The facility will also be steps away from a 360-unit residential development planned next to the Paramus Park Mall.
“While the main campus is only really five miles away, we wanted to get something a little bit closer to the community and make it more convenient,” he said. “Everyone, if you live in Bergen County, you’re touching the Parkway, Route 17 or Route 4. It’s a central location.”
Paramus, long known as a shopping mecca, is also becoming a medical hub, with the opening of Hackensack’s wellness center, Bergen New Bridge Medical Center on East Ridgewood Avenue and The Valley Hospital, which moved from Ridgewood to a newly constructed $868 million facility off of Route 17 last month.
So far, orthopedics, allergy, neuroscience, primary care, rheumatology, cardiology, nephrology, dermatology, and physical and occupational therapy are open at the Paramus site. Opening this spring and summer will be laboratory services, infusion, advanced imaging, and medical oncology, with pediatric specialties opening later this year.
About a third of the doctors and medical personnel working in the building will come from the current system, and the rest will be new hires, Lozano said.
In the past year, Hackensack Meridian has seen a 17% growth in its cancer patient population, Garrett said, highlighting the need for more space for cancer treatment outside of the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center.
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A quarter of adults don’t have a primary care physician, Garrett said. Even fewer people under the age of 30 regularly visit a doctor. The large primary care practice in Paramus will provide patients with easy access to care, rather than visiting a busy emergency room or an urgent care center.
“It’s about providing better access to care, but it’s also about affordability,” he said. “Providing care in an outpatient setting costs much less than in a hospital.”
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